PAS: a new scheduling scheme for broadcasting a video over a single channel

Most broadcasting methods for near video-on-demand services make subscribers download data simultaneously from multiple channels. In fact, many practical systems and set-top-boxes, such as wireless-local area network, digital video broadcasting-handheld and integrated services digital broadcasting-handheld allow downloading of data only from a single channel. The authors present here a new broadcasting method, called PAS, over a single channel. The proposed PAS method works by first partitioning a film into equal-sized segments, which are then divided into several groups, and then staggering segments within the same group to be broadcast over a single channel. Compared with the previous methods, the PAS method not only has a lower buffer requirement, but also maintains a shorter average waiting time.